“Life Changes in the Instant”

The writer is a current president.

Last year was one of the strangest emotional whiplashes of my presidency.

In the fall, we celebrated the largest enrollment in institutional history. Our campaign exceeded expectations. The board was energized. Alumni were optimistic. Donors were engaged. For a brief moment, it felt as though perhaps we had finally escaped the gravitational pull that has consumed so many small colleges over the last decade.

Then spring semester arrived.

Our budget projections worsened almost overnight: Inflation consumed us. A surprise mold outbreak and a few down elevators crushed our physical plant budget. Legal costs doubled from the year below. Winter proved so cold that utilities skyrocketed. And financial aid needs grew at unsustainable rates.

Add in personnel challenges and the resulting problems from those team members, and the euphoria from the fall rapidly dissipated.

And yet, the external perception remained unchanged. Once a college announces record enrollment or campaign success, many people understandably assume the hard part is over. It becomes strangely difficult to explain that a successful year in modern higher education often simply means you have purchased yourself another year to keep solving the same impossible math problems. It is easy to see why so many presidents look exhausted even while standing at podiums announcing victories.

What has complicated things further for me this year is the growing pressure to expand into programs, certificates, and workforce initiatives that would have been considered well outside our institutional mission even five years ago. Local employers want quick-turn credentials. Community leaders want immediate labor force solutions. Trustees ask practical questions about market demand. Consultants arrive with slide decks explaining where enrollment growth supposedly exists.

And the truth is, they are not wrong. But neither is the small voice in my head asking what happens if, in the pursuit of sustainability, an institution slowly ceases to recognize itself.

I suspect this is one of the defining tensions of the current era of higher education, particularly for tuition-dependent institutions. We are simultaneously told to innovate aggressively and preserve our identity faithfully. Expand access but reduce costs. Serve workforce needs but defend the liberal arts. Operate more like businesses while also being criticized whenever we do.

The strange thing is that I remain optimistic. Not naively optimistic, but stubbornly so. Because I do believe colleges can evolve thoughtfully. I believe adaptation is necessary. I also believe mission matters deeply. What I no longer believe is that any of these decisions are as obvious or morally clean as people often pretend they are from the outside (heck … it comes from the inside, too).

Perhaps that is the real work of the modern presidency: trying to thread a needle that grows narrower every year—between celebrating success and foreshadowing ongoing challenge, mission and market, access and sustainability, innovation and identity—all while everyone around you insists the path forward should be perfectly obvious.